By John Richardson SEVERAL major petrochemical companies only have one scenario for China, which is that its economy will continue to grow at a rapid rate, the blog has been told by people working for these companies. Similarly, as fellow blogger Paul Hodges pointed out earlier this week, when the great synthetic fibre-chain investment boom was […]
Asian Chemical Connections
China New Leaders Announced
Xi Jinping addresses the 18th Party Congress Source of picture: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA/Rex Features By John Richardson CHINA’S new seven-man Politburo Standing Committee was announced today, with the bad news being that five of its members are thought to be either conservative or cautiously conservative. The country needs reformers. The top job of party chief and putative […]
Indonesia’s “Great Moderation”
Graph prepared by The Economist By John Richardson INDONESIA has enjoyed eight consecutive quarters of 6% GDP growth and so – along with several other mainly domestically-demand driven Asian economies – is viewed as a haven of stability in an increasingly uncertain world. The country’s 2012 demand growth for polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), polyvinyl chloride (PVC) […]
US Oil: Nothing Is Uncertain As Certainty
By John Richardson ALL of yesterday’s excitement about the US overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia by 2017 to become the world’s biggest oil producer – and exceeding Russia to become the world’s biggest gas producer by 2015 – needs to be taken with a very large pinch of salt. The release of the International Energy […]
China Lending Declines In October
By John Richardson POLITICS, politics and politics are three most important factors that need to be evaluated when assessing the direction of China’s economy. Thus, in the short term it appears that the surge in bank lending from May to September might well have been to create the illusion of a robust economy ahead of the […]
Asian PE Recovery On “China Turning Point”
By John Richardson ASIAN polyethylene (PE) prices rose by $10-30/tonne for the week ending 9 November in response to reports of low inventories, according to ICIS. A further improvement in the market is anticipated by one trader, as a result of the release of raft of positive Chinese economic data last Friday. This is based on the […]
The Suspension Has Gone
By John Richardson WHAT a week it’s been when, of course, politics has trumped everything else and has challenged the view of those who believe that demand will take care of itself. Demand did take care of itself during the Supercycle, but that is now over for good. China no longer has the comfort blanket of […]
China’s Intellectual Property Challenge
Wen Jiabao – stepping down Source of picture: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA/Rex Features In the last of our series of posts on China’s leadership handover, which begins today as the 18th Party Congress meets, we look at intellectua property rights protection. By John Richardson WHY bother innovating in China when a state-owned, or state-backed, company is able to steal […]
China: Consumption And Hot Air
Source: New York Times By John Richardson TALK of a billion plus Western-style consumers is nothing more than hot air, with the temperature maintained by the financial sector eager to sell you its products. The reality is very different, as this article from the New York Times describes. In the third of our series […]
Tackling The SOEs
“The state advances as the private sector retreats…” The table below shows the size of China state-owned enterprises versus some other corporate giants. Source of table: The Economist. ICBC is the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. By John Richardson In the second of our series of blog posts ahead of this week’s 18th […]
Jump to page: